The Anatomy of a Male Co-Worker

(And what happens when you get too close to it…)

In college, the men were free.

Of course, there was always the stigma of students dating staff, but if you stuck to the majority of men—single, college men—then it was relatively easy to meet someone, hook-up, and carry on what would inevitably become a fairly dysfunctional (or was that just me?) college relationship. The college social equation is flawlessly constructed to bring people together: guys + girls + alcohol + dorm rooms + no mortgage (in deference to parents everywhere, I had to throw that one in there) = a good story to tell your friends the next day. But then you graduate, and for better or for worse, something happens to your sweet, little social equation—and to the guys involved in it.

Now, working in Manhattan, you are still surrounded by single, attractive young men on a daily basis, and between the office parties and happy hours, there is still plenty of alcohol to be had by all. On top of that, all of your apartments (read: beds) are still relatively close to one another; however, despite ease of access, this isn’t college anymore. The name of the game has changed and so have all of the rules—severely. It’s almost like someone has decided to play an evil ruse where they’ve taken all of the eligible single men in Manhattan and have placed them in an office together—with you—and before you know it, that nerdy finance guy who you would have totally swooned over in your Accounting 101 class first semester sophomore year is the suit-wearing guy sitting in the cube next to you. Suddenly, things don’t seem as easy as they were in college.

Ladies, if you haven’t already made their acquaintance, I’m proud to introduce you to your worst (or rather, most complicated) nightmare: the single, attractive and oh so eligible male co-worker. Your co-worker.

There are some girls who just don’t seem to care. Acting on impulse, they hook up with the first attractive guy they find themselves flirting with at a Wednesday afternoon office happy hour. The problem here is that next Wednesday afternoon, the same thing may happen with another guy, and before two months are out, they’re wearing the utterly unglamorous moniker of “Office Slut.” On the flipside, there are some people I know that have chosen to recognize the potential stickiness of the male co-worker hook-up situation, only to find that the supposedly responsible “let’s-just-flirt-and-not-hook-up” approach has turned their coy after-hour exchanges into awkward work encounters, in which both parties feign surprise at actually running into one another in (shock!), of all places, the office!

There is also the issue of seeing your co-workers more than you see everyone else in your life, thereby creating the “I–think-I-like-him-but-it-could-just-be-because-I’m-used-to-him” scenario, in which you and your co-worker hang out all of the time and become really good friends, to the point where you feel like you are in a sexless pseudo-relationship in which there are no real feelings (or are there?), and you constantly try and make sense of the situation until you’re just annoyed by the whole twisted relationship in general. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not there are or were any feelings there, it’s just not worth analyzing anymore.

It seems that when it comes to single, male co-workers, there doesn’t seem to be a specific course of action in terms of what you should and shouldn’t do. Personally, I think that there are several things to consider before making a decision, which for your convenience, I’ve pulled into a brief checklist below:

• Are you attracted to your single male co-worker, or just how he looks in a suit?
• Does your co-worker have an on-again, off-again girlfriend? (Does that girlfriend work in the office?)
• During co-worker happy hours, does he flirt with the bar tender? (Are you sure that the last bar tender was a woman?)
• Is he nerdy in an attractive way, or is he just really nerdy and you are trying to convince yourself that he is attractive because he is the only guy you’ve seen on a consistent basis for the past month?
• Does he have an annoying habit of sending inter-office e-mails or IMs to you with randomly placed and oddly excessive exclamation points?
  

There are, of course, many more questions to ask, and I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to male co-workers, I am far from the final word.

The truth is, as a PR professional, I don’t have this problem. I work with all women.

And trust me, that comes with a whole other set of issues.